90 TROUT FISHING 



though they remain with me pleasurably. My 

 feeling in regard to them is awed rather than 

 indignant. I was fishing a river which had suffered 

 grievously from pollution, and which was supposed 

 to have lost a large part of its stock of fish, either 

 because they had migrated downstream or because 

 they had been killed outright. My impression at 

 the end of a long hot tramp of some miles was that 

 there was truth in the story of pollution, that the 

 big trout and grayling had mostly disappeared, 

 but that things were now improving. I had seen a 

 sprinkling of small trout and myriads of tiny gray- 

 ling. But as for sport I had had none. 



By the time the day was dead, and the evening 

 moribund, I reflected that the fishing had been very 

 much like the day, for hardly a rise was to be seen 

 anywhere, at any rate from anything of more than 

 six inches long. Perpetual observation of a river 

 which is dimpled in all directions by grayling under 

 that length is trying to the temper, especially when 

 you suffer all the time from great heat accompanied 

 by a thundery sort of glare. Even the most opti- 

 mistic angler gets tired of casting to those dimples 

 and pretending that they are worth the trouble. 



But now all that was over and the evening also 

 was drawing to a close. It had produced one 

 disaster, a two-pound trout which had unhooked 

 himself after taking an orange quill, and further 



